Nick Boles: The Coalition’s Cameroon Outrider

By

Iain Martin

Sep 13, 2010 2:13 pm GMT

Party leaderships like having outriders — figures prepared to go out in front, checking the way for practical obstacles and clearing a path if necessary. They create the conditions in which new ideas can be tested in the political marketplace and potential opposition assessed without the leadership putting its neck on the line. If an idea plays badly the outrider and his ideas can be quietly abandoned, leaving him stranded like a secret agent left behind enemy lines because it is too dangerous to arrange a rescue.

New Labour had several such figures. A few ended up making themselves rather unpopular, probably even more unpopular than they intended. The Blairite Stephen Byers was one such “trailblazer.” It was Byers who suggested, off the record to journalists over dinner at Labour conference I think, that the historic link between the party and the trade unions should be severed, or substantially weakened. This was not popular with traditionalists.

Today, I spy a coalition outrider: Nick Boles, MP for Grantham, founder of Policy Exchange and the archetypal Cameroon ultra-modernizer. I don’t think Boles even owned a tie until he was elected to the House of Commons. That’s how much of a Cameroon the man is.

Boles has a new book out on the future of the coalition entitled “Which Way Is Up?” It’s an intriguing question. As long as you keep both feet on the ground, and are mindful of the laws of political gravity, it’s usually not too difficult to work out which way is up, and which way down.